


Getting By

by BlackKittens



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Best Friends, Comfort No Hurt, Friendship, Slice of Life, Some Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 07:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21406285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackKittens/pseuds/BlackKittens
Summary: Gogo wakes up feeling low, but manages to get through the day with the help of her friends.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 9





	Getting By

**Author's Note:**

> Don't ask what this is because I don't know. I just started writing and this is what came out.

Gogo is in a low mood today.

It starts when she wakes up, her head foggy and thoughts groggy. Twisting her upper body up on her arms for support feels like she's exerting too much energy. It would be nice to flop back down into bed and go back to sleep for another four hours, she thinks. But she has class in two hours, and can't afford to go back to sleep for so long.

Her apartment is small and cozy, yet spacious enough she doesn't feel claustrophobic. It suits her; even back when she used to get homesick for her parents' house, it still felt like her home. It feels like _her._

The walls are a soft violet, the carpets a bit darker and closer to blue. Her living room is also her at-home work area, with tools, schematics, and partially finished projects lining the walls under the windows and lying on her coffee table next to her school laptop. The couch is small and has flowery pillows, gifts from her mom who loves to embroider, laying on each end. The small, flat screen TV sits on an old table shelf that holds her toolboxes underneath, usually turned off when she's trying to work. A small island counter connected to the fridge cuts off the kitchen from the living room. It's a neat, little, open square of sea blue tiled counters, warm brown flooring, and cute, cooking themed knick-knacks that her parents and sisters like to give her decorating the place. On the other end of the main room, beside the kitchen, is the small hall that leads to her bedroom. It's about half the size of her living room, and where the door to her bathroom can be found. Her bed is directly across from the bathroom door, her vanity on one side, covered in old family and friend pictures and reminder sticky notes, as well as her make up, and her dresser littered with more tools, spare parts, and lazily tossed aside text- and notebooks on the other.

This morning, however, Gogo doesn't pay any mind to the soft violet walls or the cute knick-knacks, and feels a slight bit annoyed at every sight of her tools and scraps.

She heaves herself out of bed, forces herself across the bedroom to the bathroom, and lazily climbs into the shower. The warm water is refreshing on her skin, but the cold air kills the relieved smile on her face as soon as she gets out. She dries off, gets dressed, and moves over to her vanity to put on her favorite purple lipstick and eyeshadow. As she does her eyelashes next, brushing them blacker, she notices one particular sticky note out of the corner of her eye, hanging on the wood between a picture of the gang outside Tadahi's aunt's café and an old list of groceries she'd picked up the other night. When she's done with her eyelashes she takes sticky note off the wood to read it properly. It's a reminder that she has a test in Professor Perez's class today and she better study hard the night before, because that class is hard and her personal drive to be the best won't let her accept the current seventy-three she has.

Gogo did not study the night before. She forgot about it between her projects in the living room, hanging out at Ngo Arcade with the others, and doing homework for her other classes.

She crumples the sticky note in her palm with a frustrated groan and drops it on the vanity in dismay. If she's lucky, she'll _keep_ her grade _at_ seventy-three instead of dropping it down into the sixties.

Sometimes she hates college. Gogo graduated from City Honors Academy, a very good college prep high school that one had to _apply_ to in order to get in, at sixth in her class. She loves San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, she truly does, but absolutely no one was kidding when they said it was difficult university. On one hand, she loves that, too, because of the challenge and how she has overcome and succeeded so far. On the other hand, screw forgetting to study for a test in a class she's struggling to stay above seventy in.

At least Professor Perez allows retests.

With a heavy, irritated sigh, Gogo hunches her shoulders and already begins searching for a place in her schedule in her head to take his retest. No doubt, she would need it.

Coming out of her room and down the hall, she enters the kitchen. She stares at the stove and fridge, separated by one chunk of counter, which had some of those silly knick-knacks on them, surrounding her coffee maker.

No, she decides, she doesn't feel like eating. Not yet anyway.

She makes herself a mug of coffee instead, downs it, and grabs her bag to get it ready for her classes and lab work today. She washes the mug last minute, because yeah it's best not to leave it out to wait until she gets home. Eventually she thinks to herself how much she really doesn't want to drag through today as she exits the apartment building and gets on her fixer-upper motorbike.

* * *

Low moods are not new to Gogo. Everybody gets them from time to time. Including stressed college students who have a million and one things to do before the semester, month, week, day, _morning_ ends.

All she can do is try to tough through it the best way she can.

Which means this:

* * *

The Lucky Cat Café is mildly busy when she arrives, parking in the street and pushing her way through the door.

"Wow," Tadashi immediately remarks, from where he's cleaning up a table for his aunt, "you look happy."

"Shut it, Hamada," she snaps, though there's hardly much force in her voice. "I don't think I got enough sleep last night. And Perez's test is at nine AM and I completely forgot to study for it. I'm gonna fail."

Tadashi winces. "He's lets you take retests, doesn't he?"

Gogo chucks out the one of the chairs at his table, tosses her bag in the other one, and flops down. "Yeah, that's only good part."

He nods, sympathetic, and raises the abandoned plates and wet rag in his hands. "You eaten yet?"

She shakes her head no. "I wasn't hungry when I got up. I had some coffee and that was it."

"You'll stress more on an empty stomach," Tadashi advises. "I'll grab you a muffin from the back, all right? My treat, you can pay me the two fifty back another day."

The slightly goofy edge to his smile says he's joking about being paid back.

Gogo reaches for her bag. "Or I can pay now."

Tadashi waves her off. "No, don't. It's just a muffin. Want plain, blueberry, banana, or chocolate chip?"

The thought of chocolate chip hits her right in the sweet tooth, but Gogo reluctantly decides against it. Its sugar is not the kind of energy burst she needs. "Banana sounds good."

"Be right back in a sec," Tadashi wanders off to the back.

When he returns, Gogo sees he failed to mention Cass was selling extra large muffins this week.

When she shoots Tadashi a flat stare, he merely smiles and shrugs. "I mean, if this all you're going to eat for the morning, might as well be something big."

She rolls her eyes, mumbling, "I guess so."

He slips into the third chair sitting across from her and folds his arms on top of the wood. "Guess what Fred texted me last night at literally one in the morning."

"What?" she asks, taking a modest bite out of the top. The banana taste hits her tongue, surprisingly sweet on her tastebuds.

Tadashi proceeds to regale her with the tale of how Fred thought he lost his cross-over comic of Amazing Man and Daisuke Danger, the one where they have to fight off three kaijus in order to protect Daisuke Danger's home city, and how he was practically crying over it by the time his texts turned into a frantic call. Tadashi, who had been awake anyway working on homework he had neglected earlier in favor of his Baymax project, - it's then Gogo notices the small, light bags under his eyes - listened carefully and empathetically, until he suddenly remembered Fred had loaned him that comic a month ago, and it was still sitting forgotten on his bookshelf. Fred had been both relieved and screaming when Tadashi informed him of such.

"Was he drunk again?" Gogo chuckles.

"Might have been high," Tadashi suggest, flicking his wrists out.

It's a joke, but Gogo laughs at the thought nonetheless. With the way Fred is obsessed with comics, she can easily picture him freaking out in an intoxicated or drug-induced state over them. After all, he hardly texts or calls the gang for emotional support because he lost a comic - actually, Gogo can't think of him ever being so overdramatic before in the first place. But she could believe it, absolutely.

"I have to take the comic to SFIT with me so I can return it to him," Tadashi laughs under his breath. "He joked that I was a thief for stealing it from him like that."

She shakes her head in wonder. "I think we need to pull an intervention on him for his addiction to comics."

"Nah," he disagrees, "Fred would break out of comic rehab on the first day."

That gets her to laugh harder, purely at the cartoonish mental images it puts into her head.

They move on to other subjects, like Tadashi's frustration with Baymax coupled with how his younger brother Hiro keeps going to bot-fights, and how excited they are that the semester is coming to an end and they'll be on winter break in no time, and what classes they're currently acing.

A bit of the gloom has lifted by the time they get up to head for SFIT, and Gogo is smiling as she chats with Tadashi on their way out the door.

* * *

The gloom returns with an extra punch after Perez's class ends.

"I failed," Gogo sulks, her bag heavy over her shoulder as she roams the campus with Fred. "I knew even less on there than I thought I did. I'm going to fail this class by the end of the semester, god damn it!"

Fred frowns beside her, eyes big with pity.

Gogo would hate it, if her mind weren't preoccupied with her failure. She wishes she'd remembered to study last night - maybe she could have gotten away with a _D_ rather that what would surely be an F on her record.

Her hands fly to her hair in a rage, nails digging into her scalp and fingers pulling. She hates failing. She can't _stand_ it.

"Hey, hey!" Fred shoots a comforting hand around her back to grab her other shoulder and scoots close to her, giving her a one armed hug. "It'll be all right. You've got a month to get your grades back up before finals and passing with, like, a seventy at minimum won't affect your GPA enough to affect your financial aid. Your scholarship's not in trouble or anything."

"That's not the point!" Gogo flings her arms down wildly, but leans into him without thinking too hard about it. She doesn't even care at the moment that his shirt is a dead comic writer's and probably hasn't seen a washer in well over a week. "I couldn't think during the stupid test! I'd start on an equation and suddenly my mind would go blank! I could remember the step _after_ the next step, but I couldn't remember the next one! I _need_ this class for my mechanical engineering degree and it's highly recommended for my industrial design degree! I don't know how I'm going to pass the retest when it turns out I knew squat on the first test!"

"Math is stupidly hard," Fred gives her a reassuring smile. "Super advanced math mixed with highly advanced tech is, like, _mega-_stupidly hard. The fact you've gotten this far and do as good as you _do_ do is awesome! I could never even hope to sign up for Perez's class, let alone understand enough to get a seventy-three."

"I don't have a seventy-three anymore," Gogo huffs indignantly, certain of it.

Fred's hand falls down her arm, and he squeezes her. "So it'll be what, a seventy-one now? A sixty-eight? You'll bounce back from this, Gogo! I know you will! If you want my advice, go see Prof. Perez during his office hours and get him to show you what to do again. I bet I also know some of his students in the tutoring center who could help you. And if you want, the rest of the gang and I could remind you when to study. Or we could do another big study group! The others will help you with Perez's stuff and I can cheer you on with snacks and superhero styled encouragement."

Gogo sighs, her body going limp against him, all but making him lead her across the bridge they found themselves on. "You guys aren't my babysitters. I should have remembered to study, and studied a _lot._ I can't say this F wasn't earned."

"You don't even know if it's an F yet!" Fred argued, throwing his free arm in the air. "And we're not 'babysitting' you; we all look out for each other. I mean, I'm not nearly smart enough to go here, and there are still days when SF State - which is so much easier by comparison - kicks my butt. You wouldn't be 'babysitting' me if you had to remind me that I had an essay on Beowulf essay due next Thurs- " Fred stops suddenly, both speaking and walking, coming to a halt at the end of the bridge, just before the grass. "Oh, god, I have a Beowulf essay due next Thursday. It has to be twenty pages. I don't have all my sources yet!"

Gogo curls her lips. "Are you trying to make me feel better by pretending you're underprepared for an essay?"

"No!" Fred shakes his head frantically. "I have five out of the twelve minimum sources I need! Ughgh, I'm gonna have spend all week and every day next week working on it if I wanna hand it in on time!"

"At least you have time to work on it," Gogo pats his ribs and quietly removes herself from his embrace. "I bet I'll be taking my retest the day you hand it in, and I'll just barely not fail. Assuming I _don't_ fail a second time, that is."

Again, Fred shakes his head wildly. "No way, uh-uh! You're gonna pass it. I'll talk to my friends in the tutoring center. And just so neither of us forget again, I can come with you and work on my essay while you're studying. How about that? It'll be harder to lose track and forget about them if we have plans to meet up there."

Despite herself - she failed and has little optimism for her retest - Gogo allows herself a small smile at his insistence. "What do I have to lose? It's a deal."

"Awesome," Fred smiles wide. "And you'll pass the course with good grades by the end of the semester, I'd bet money on it! This is just another nasty hurdle you have to overcome to pass, you'll see."

She chuckles under her breath at his encouragement. "Thanks, Fred."

* * *

Nothing goes right for her in the lab, and that has Gogo's blood boiling by mid-day.

Her bike is not fast enough; in fact, several of her rejected electro-magnetic tires were _faster_ than the ones she tests today. Her hands-on projects for several of her classes either don't want to work or don't meet her expectations; it's not as if she expects instant success, but the fact she's not even reaching her own expectations riles her. And worst of all, she's disturbingly in tune with all the other voices, clanks, and zaps within the lab, which distract and aggravate her to no end.

This is not her day. She can't stay her usual cool, calm, and collected self like this.

So when Honey Lemon approaches her with some new chemical concoction that will turn a solid into a gas, Gogo whirls on her and snaps, "Can't you see I'm busy!?"

Honey Lemon stops short, her face falling.

Guilt immediately fills Gogo. She doesn't usually snap at her friends like that.

With a slap to her forehead, she lowers her stance and slumps forward. "Ugh, I'm sorry, Honey Lemon. I have a lot on my mind and nothing is going right right now, so I'm in a bad mood. I didn't mean to yell."

Honey Lemon relaxes. "Oh, I see," she replied quietly. "Well, I hope you feel better."

Gogo forces a little smile, one she feels shows a little too much of her teeth. "Thanks."

With a tilt of her head, Honey Lemon - rather than go away - steps forward and places her concoction on a table a safe distance away from Gogo's workbench. "So what's not working right?"

Gogo has to think for a moment; Honey Lemon is one of the farthest people from stupid she knows, being close friends with each other has taught everyone in the gang more about everyone's majors than they might have otherwise known, and everyone at SFIT has classes outside their majors, but that doesn't mean Honey Lemon is on her level of mechanical engineering and industrial design any more than Gogo is on hers for chemistry. It isn't like she's struggling with the basics - this is advanced work.

When she's got a somewhat simplified explanation down, she tells her. Gogo starts off calmly, or as calmly as she's able, but the words quickly build up in a rage as she goes over what was _supposed_ to work _this_ way and how she can't understand why it _didn't,_ and spills out in a near rage what happened instead.

By the time she's done, Honey Lemon is looking down at her with a mild expression.

"Okay," she starts out, brushing a lock of blonde hair out of her face. "That's a good start! Now that we know what it was supposed to do and what it did instead, let's look at why. Can I see that part over there? What exactly is it made of and how are the materials supposed to work with these ones?"

It's several minutes into the finer explanation and after a minor as well as a major mind-spinning breakthrough that Gogo realizes what just went down: Honey Lemon let her rage, took her feelings seriously without beratement or chiding, and used the 'explain and teach this to me' method to get her to work out the problem through a meticulous rundown of her bike project.

In the end, as Gogo's getting her hands and progress back in motion, her shoulders feel freer than they have all day.

Honey Lemon must be able to see it, because she suddenly beams beside her. "It's coming together now! You go, Gogo!"

Gogo quirks her lips up in a modest smile, almost embarrassed at her previous frustration now that she's back on track. "Thanks, Honey Lemon. Couldn't have done it without you."

"Ah, I didn't do anything except listen to you figure it out!" she waves her off.

Gogo smile grows more confident. "Heh, if you say so. So what were you saying about your chemicals? It'll turn a solid into a gas?"

Honey Lemon brightens, nabbing her concoction back up and presenting it in front of her. "Yes! It's not anywhere near the final testing stage yet, but so far it corrodes steal, copper, silver, and zinc, dissolving them into a state that slowly evaporates. It's fascinating how the chemicals in it combine together, like the..."

Gogo listens closely as Honey Lemon enthusiastically explains, finally able to tune everything _else_ in the lab out while she continues on her work.

* * *

The free feeling does not last forever, unfortunately; it wouldn't be a low mood day if it did, now would it?

Especially not when Perez has clearly been busy and already posted grades. Gogo's mood had already been falling back down as her body tired out from the day's events, but by the time she's hanging with Wasabi in the student lounge after dinner, a dinner she barely ate in the cafeteria, and decides to check her grades in her other classes, she sees her test grade from this morning and how it affected her overall grade.

In short: Yes, she failed, and her new overall grade is a _sixty-nine_ out of all numbers!

"Sixty-nine isn't that bad a number when you ignore the perv connotation," Wasabi tries to cheer her up, setting the physics VI textbook he'd been reading down in his lap. "Plus, that'll be really easy to bring up. You'll be passing again by the end of the week."

"Not if I don't get it!" Gogo growls. "If I keep failing, it'll just get worse! I can't afford to fail this class, why is it bugging me so much!?"

Wasabi sits up in his beanbag chair. "Fred said he was gonna set up a tutoring session for you at the tutor center, didn't he? That's what he told me; I'm sure it'll help you."

All the energy and fight suddenly leaves Gogo's body. She slumps in her beanbag chair. "Yeah, he did. Doesn't mean seeing my horrible grades doesn't make my stomach churn. I knew this was going to happen, but geez it's bad seeing it. I should have stayed in bed today."

Wasabi raises an eyebrow. "You, stay in bed? _You?_ Lemme guess, you've been having it rough since you got up, huh?"

Gogo gazes at him, nonplussed, and nods. "Today's one of _those_ days."

"Ahh," Wasabi says.

He actually had one of these days not too long ago, just at the end of October. Gogo remembers how burned out he'd been after mid-terms, so it was no surprise when his brain caved on him after weeks of trying to dive back into his regular, strenuous workload.

They all got into these moods from time to time, after all.

"Is this the kind of low where you want to see the counselors?" he asks.

"No," she tells him. "It's not that bad. I'm just tired, irritable, and not that hungry. Perez's test hasn't helped."

"Do you think worrying over his class is what caused it?"

"I think I'm just in a low mood today, Wasabi."

"Fair enough," he concedes, leaning back. "Maybe you should head home and spend the rest of the night relaxing. Go to bed early and get some sleep. Did you eat at dinner?"

He sounds scarily similar to her mother when she calls on a _normal_ day, but Gogo appreciates the sentiment. "A little. Not much."

"Do you think you'll get sick if you eat something?" he asks her.

She shrugs. "Dunno. Tadashi already made me eat today, you know."

Wasabi eyes her. "When was that?"

Gogo knows this will not be an answer he likes. "Breakfast."

His eyes roll dramatically to the ceiling. "Please tell me you ate lunch between breakfast and dinner."

"I was kind of preoccupied in the labs."

He gives her a flat stare, though it's more unimpressed than judgmental. "Have you drank water today?"

"Does the coffee I had this morning and the sips I took at the water fountains throughout the day count?"

"Jesus, Gogo," he slams his textbook shut. "Proper meals and drinking plenty of water can help your mood, you know that."

She does. She's beyond caring at this point. "Not really up for it."

Wasabi stands. He holds out a hand to her. "Come on, I'll drive you home. _I'll_ make you a light but healthy dinner, we can invite the others over to watch a movie if you're feeling up to it, and then you're going to bed."

On one hand, Gogo despises being babied and does not like him telling her what to do like this. On the other, she's tired and unhappy and probably going to flunk Perez's class and what he's offering sounds nice. The fact she knows he's right pushes her over the edge.

"Fine," she accepts his hand and he pulls her up.

* * *

By ten o'clock that night, the cheesy monster/human horror-romance Honey Lemon picked out is over, there's Chinese take out (ordered at Fred's badgering) replacing her tools, schematics, and partially finished projects on her coffee table. Wasabi has taken it upon himself to personally clean up her living room, despite Gogo's warnings and insistence he not. Fred is torn between gushing in awe of the movie with Honey Lemon and blabbing about the tutoring schedule he got set up for Gogo with some of Perez' top students this week. Honey Lemon is completely lost in the gushing. And Tadashi is both helping Wasabi clean by picking up the Chinese cartons and dishes and playfully pestering Gogo about how she looked like she was tearing up during the monster and his human love interest's tragic reunion, laughing when she denies it over and over.

It's nice. It's fun. She's feeling far better than she did this morning in bed, foggy headed with groggy thoughts. She's almost forgotten about Perez' stupid test and is feeling better about going to the tutoring center this coming Wednesday.

After all they all leave, Gogo hits the hay, keeping the promise all four of them forced her to make before they would go. To be fair, she falls asleep quickly and sleeps deeper than she had the night before.

When she wakes up the next morning, late since her first class isn't until noon, there's a string of messages in their group chat, filled with silly pictures, stupid memes, jokes, and chattering about their early morning adventures (apparently Honey Lemon busted her hair dryer and didn't find out until _after_ she got out of the shower, and Tadashi's little brother played some prank that had Tadashi chasing him around the house). Gogo has to crack a smile at them all.

All in all, she feels much livelier than yesterday. Her friends always know how to make her feel better.

Then again, they always take care of each other, don't they? They could always rely on each other when one of them wasn't feeling in high spirits. She's glad for it.

**Author's Note:**

> I...*think* this was supposed to be about how having friends - who care, of course - can help lift a terrible mood even when other things keep doing their best to bring you down? I don't know. I know I wasn't trying to write Gogo as depressed, mentally ill, or otherwise sick, just having a bad mood/low energy day where nothing seemed to want to go right on its own.
> 
> Anyway, I hope it made sense and was enjoyable!


End file.
